


It Must Have Been Good, But I Lost It Somehow

by welseykels



Series: Fallout 4: Charlotte Walsh [8]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Angst, Break Up, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-18
Updated: 2016-10-18
Packaged: 2018-08-23 05:40:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8315980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/welseykels/pseuds/welseykels
Summary: The continuing saga of Charlotte Walsh, Nick Valentine, and R.J. MacCready.  Set shortly after the Hole in the Wall quest, but several years after the main story line has been completed.





	

**Author's Note:**

> [Check out my writing masterpage on tumblr!](https://welseykels.tumblr.com/writing)

It takes until the next year goes by before everything falls apart, all the careful plans she’d made ruined, at least that’s how she’d come to describe it to him later. **  
**

Nick’s at the small secondary office Charlie’d given him in Sanctuary the summer before.  He’d spent the winter in Diamond City, just as she’d spent hers in Goodneighbour, a new routine for the both of them. At the first signs of spring he’d headed back up to Sanctuary, knowing she’d be returning for the farming season with her family. Her whole family, the man she loved and her two sons. He’d even heard rumours that they were expecting another, but he always found it hard to truly believe whatever Deacon said.

It was a little masochistic really, watching the joy on her face as she raised her sons alongside another man. He’d done it before. But it hadn’t felt the same back then - by then he’d fallen out of love with her.  He’d been more than happy to see her happiness at finding a man who could live on her schedule that she truly loved, as he’d found the woman who had been the one he’d thought would walk at his side hand-in-hand for the rest of his life.  The one he’d wanted to walk with him until he was old and grey and content in the life he’d lived.

And the both had been taken away from them with two gunshots.

It was only her and Shaun coming through the gate’s doors, it wasn’t hard to see, his office just inside the wall they’d built to protect the community.  He stood in the open doorway, a smile on his lips as he had another few months with her during the farming season before she was gone again.

“Hey, everybody, the General’s back!”  It’s Deacon who strides out of the community centre, past Nick’s little office and holds his arms out.  It’s just before Deacon speaks that Nick sees something off - her head’s bare.  “You look practically naked without Mac’s hat, Wanderer.  Where’s the good ol’ merc it belongs to?”

When she can’t answer Deacon, Nick knows that something’s wrong, that the other half of her little family isn’t coming around the corner.  “Look, uh, it’s been a long trip Dee, I think Shaun’s ready to sleep. Right, honey?”

A long yawn from the little boy gives them his answer.  And then Nick watches her make her way through the crowd, up the road to the little home that’s been her’s for centuries.  Deacon turns and offers him a shrug.

It isn’t until Shaun’s in his bed and the moon has started to rise that Nick finds her out in the backyard, the same one those flashes of memory tells him he’s spent a helluva lot of time in.  He offers her a cigarette, lighting it for her as he settles down beside her on the bench.

“You alright, Charlie?”

She keeps her distance still, the opposite ends of the bench drawing them away from falling together.  “No.”

He knows he should give her her space, but this is his Charlie.  The women Nicholas Valentine had wanted since he was fifteen - the woman he’s found himself wanting again, but she’s in love with someone else.  They’d always had bad timing together.  He’s an old synth anyways - a hard trade for the flesh and blood she’s always known - with the brain of someone else, even if it had been someone who’d loved her from the very first. Of course, he’d fallen out of love with her, too - that had come later. But now he found himself back in, deeper than before, and it was enough sometimes that he wanted to march to Amari and the Railroad and have it all gone.

_But he couldn’t._

Even if he’d have no clue after the procedure, he couldn’t stand thinking of the next time she’d see him, knowing he’d wiped away everything he was, wiped away everything he’d had. He couldn’t stand wiping away the last few centuries.  Not her, not Jennifer, not Nate, not Ellie, not any of the friends and memories he’d made since he woke up in that pile of trash alone and afraid.

And so now, he doesn’t put an arm around her like he wants to. Instead, he offers her a second cigarette when the first is nearly gone.

He offers her an understanding silence.

He hopes it’s enough.

The sun’s still hours off when she finally puts out another cigarette and speaks.  “We, uh, we found out what Vault 80 was supposed to be used for.”

He listens as she explains the experiments for diseases and their cures, how the overseer had sealed all the scientists off and saved the vault, of how a little boy had found a way in and almost died… and how she had become infected too. “Mac was so angry at me that I didn’t use the cure on myself. That I’d given the whole thing to Austin instead.  We fought that whole night, I-”

“Charlie, are you - are you sick?”  His hand moves to cover hers before he can even think about it, fear more than laced at the edge of his voice.

“No. In adults it’s not life threatening, just tires me out a bit more easily.” She gives him a weak smile that doesn’t reach her eyes and he knows her well enough that she’s not telling him the whole truth. “But in kids - in kids… Nicky, he would have died if I’d kept it all for me.  I didn’t want to take the chance that half a dose wouldn’t work on him.”

They sit there in silence, he’s not quite sure what to say; he’s not quite sure what to do. He offers another cigarette, but this time she declines.  So he lights up his own.

“I asked him what he would have done if it had been our sons?  Would he have wanted me to keep it for myself then?”  He notices the wet tracks that line her cheeks as her voice starts to break over the words. “The boys were already in bed and I hope they didn’t hear.  I’d asked him what if we had let Duncan die?  Where would we have been then?  Would there have even been an us?  I love him, Nick. But I can’t, I can’t look at him without thinking that he would have left that little boy to die.”

Her fingers grip his a little tighter and they wait until her tears stop, until her breathing evens.  He doesn’t know how long it is.

“I left.  I just… I packed us up and left. I - I love him and I left.  I didn’t even say goodbye.  He doesn’t deserve that.  I love him, but I can’t - I can’t.”  The tears begin again, both of them surprised that there had been more left as she’s clutching onto his hand for dear life now.  “I can’t look at him.  I love him and I don’t know what to do and that’s why - why when we were in Maine… why I…”  He doesn’t need her to finish the sentence, he knows why she’d told him she wanted a future with MacCready. But she does. “I love you too, but I thought it would be easier. He was going to get his son and then we could be all together. Our sons and us. And Nick, Nicky… I was scared that you’d live on past me, that you’ll forget me like DiMA will.  And so I ran away, and I lost you before I’d ever really had you again.  And now I’ve gone and lost Robert too.  Just like Nate. I lose people, Nicky.”

She cries herself into exhaustion and he holds her hand until the sun peaks it’s way over the hills, until she’s fallen asleep against his shoulder.  “You haven’t lost me, Charlie.  You couldn’t.”

**Author's Note:**

> Certain companion approval/disapproval reactions have always bothered me for Hole in the Wall, and I know they’re going to have to actually talk about it really soon, but his reaction to giving the cure has always seemed strange to me given his personal quests.
> 
> I mean Charlie’s a bit of a hypocrite too given what she did to the Institute - a lot of one - but that too will be addressed later. Now I’m going to hide and hope this turned out okay. This has been really difficult to write, and I hope I can do it at least the smallest bit of justice.


End file.
